Dell SCAMMED Me - $1500 PC Secret Shopper 2 Part 4

[uncreativespace]

3 hours ago, Streetguru said:

Then maybe sub contract steve from GN about it because he will tear it apart

 

4 hours ago, nbrowser said:

Unless their business practices have changed in the last couple of years...they don't ship to Canada as I posed such a question to them a couple of years ago. That said I live close enough to them here in Vancouver BC so if I wanted one when the border opens...I could go pick it up in person.

They do technically ship to Canada with the biggest disclaimer (source: https://www.pugetsystems.com/international_policies.php). I quoted out systems from them to ship to AB last year.

 

It's hardly what I would call a stamp of reliability (and GamersNexus would have a field day) but is ultimately understandable due to the costs involved turning a boutique integrator into an international business. Between coordinating warranties and business insurance it's too much liability for them.

[GoodBytes]

14 hours ago, Luscious said:

Michael Dell should be rolling in his grave at this point. How a person can put his name on a company with such a horrible reputation and still be walking on this planet with a smile on his face goes against everything. Worse, they can't even be bothered to do a better job. Reminds me of Mercedes Benz from the 90's when you dropped $200K on an S class only for it to "spontaneously combust" inside your garage.

 

Dell needs to go the way of Gateway and just die.

Well, Dell used to be pretty good ages ago... then the company went public... and this is where things fell apart rather quickly. Things just collapsed when PC sales went down, where the company was, like the other big manufactures at the time, in a price war for years (cutting all corners to deliver the lowest price for the given spaces. Think: crappy coolers, unbalanced specs, plastic screen hinges (I am looking at you HP on those 2 last points), etc.), all at the same time, pushing ridicules revenue target goals to please shareholders.

 

I think this horrible culture movement really entrenched itself in the company, especially this was something they did for years on end. Recently Michael Dell bought the company again, turned it back as a private one to save it from being extinguished (yes, it was worse than now... at least they have a decent system), but he definably over paid, and didn't have the money, and went with loans... which now has, I think, made the company be stuck in this crappy way of doing business to try a payoff this loan. I am not defending the company... this is not our problem. He is a CEO after all, with years of experience, there is no guess works on his actions.

 

I don't see how Dell can fix this, beside a complete upper and mid-level managerial restructure and even replacement, to bring in new business ideas, and remove the crap culture. But this is easier said than done. This has a high cost, financially, and that is probably something that Michael Dell isn't willing to spend (from his own pocket) and in the meantime, it could lead to make situation worse (mistaken that a mature company like Dell should not have, are doing, for example). Again, Michael Dell has the money...personal money... but isn't willing to use it. This isn't our problem, of course. 

[Egg-Roll]

So Dell is breaking the law, whats new. Maybe report them to the government for doing it, unlike most people you actually have concrete evidence.

Also maybe when LTT reviews their products they should start adding a "warning you might get warranty scammed if bought directly" with big bold yellow letters with a siren going off with 2 red lights on each end in every video till they change.

[atxcyclist]

Dude, you're getting scammed!

 

This is seriously shit-tastic from Dell, and I hate to see this because they're from my home turf (well, the city over from where I live). As a company that's been in this game for as long as they have been, they should have the sales procedure down at this point.

[eeeee1]

I seen the Dell scam like 14 years ago. tsk tsk

[Bitter]

So I ran up against that weird HP Omen CPU power limit thing when I was fixing and 'tuning up' my friends brothers PC. 8700K with a pretty stock-ish looking cooler on it (not Intel stock because it was bolted to the board but certainly not a performance cooler) that would boost for a short power limit and then throttle hard to 65W but still had plenty of thermal head room to go higher than the 65W it was being limited at. I don't know if it was a VRM issue so I ran it on Prime95 small fft torture for a while and checked the VRM temps (no heat sinks on them!?) and they were acceptable around 65-70C so not stellar and even a pretty basic heat sink would have been beneficial to getting a little more juice through them. I was able to use Intel XTU to up the power limit a bit (I think around 80W) to hold a higher clock speed and ended up with about 80C CPU and VRM's around 80C as well. I added a 120MM fan to the top of the case to blow cool air down over the board and CPU cooler just to be sure things would stay cool enough in there also.  I suggested that he could swap the cooler for something better and probably get more performance out of it but I wasn't sure about the board handling the extra power draw long term. I was not impressed with the system overall.

 

Why HP has that weird limit on TDP? My guess would be that they're the ONLY people that are following Intel spec on power limits and turbo duration, because I recognized this throttling from other HP systems but come on HP....This is a gaming PC, stick some heat sinks on the VRM, put a little better CPU cooler on there, and up the CPU power limits and turbo duration.  Of course I highly doubt that anyone buying a HP Omen gaming PC understands any of this or would likely even notice that they're getting Pinto performance with a Mustang price tag.

[Ginger Penguin]

To sidestep the Dell bashing (which I'm totally on board with - wow, they are worse than I realised - this is something that should be followed up with especially if other people have been scammed - some sort of class action thing maybe?) there was something in the video I was curious about. Linus leaned quite heavily on systems that used a SATA SSD as a boot drive as opposed to going NVME. Isn't the current wisdom that for a boot drive, NVME doesn't actually provide an appreciable benefit? When building or parting out systems for friends and family I always go SATA for boot because they're always cheaper for a given capacity so you can save a fair amount if you're on a lower budget or increase your solid-state capacity for the same price if that's more important. Even in my pretty spec'd out video editing PC I use a SATA for boot and an NVME for project files, cache and render.

[Jet_ski]

I’m not surprised of Dell and very happy Linus explicitly called them out on it. A while back I wanted to get a GPU and Dell rep sent me an invoice for $500 over the MSRP for a card they were going to back order. They also repeatedly tried to add extended warranty and financing options. I had to decline it several times before the guy stopped. So that’s definitely what Dell wants these people to push. Dell sucksssssssss. And I decided not to go through with the purchase.

[Kazlehoff]

I Commented this on the Reddit post for this video as well, but im bringing the comment over here as well for visibility.

Other than the one comment on the first YouTube video that they deleted after the video lost hype, has Dell responded at all to this? 

 

They should be responding to a number of issues here:

 

• Why wasn't a customer who was calling to buy a gaming system immediately directed to the Alienware systems?
• Why was the customer badgered repeatedly for warranty extensions, and antivirus extensions they explicitly stated they did not want or need? Why were those options then included in the purchase price anyway? How (and why) were two mutually exclusive warranty options added to the same order?
• Why are you using 3200Mhz Memory (in a single channel, no less) on a platform that won't run the memory any faster than 2933mhz?

Like there should be questions for some of the other manufacturers as well.

 

• Origin, why are you wasting customers' money on a wooden crate, and the extra shipping cost to send it? why are you putting a water cooler on a non-overclockable CPU, and using an overclocking motherboard for both? 
• CyberpowerPC, why would you tell a customer on the phone "IDK what you want or need" when they just told you what they want and need?
• HP, Origin, Maingear, Dell, Why would you only offer one year of warranty baseline when most of the components bought separately offer 2-3 year warranties, with some parts offering up to five-year warranties (notably, power supplies and CPUs)? at least CyberPowerPC got this one right. 
• HP Why the hell are you limiting power so hard? on a gaming system?

 

I've worked for a System Integrator here in Canada (Not Memory Express, the one that Linus almost never mentions) and Jesus Christ. when clients came to me for builds, the markup was only like $70 - $140 bucks, and we built them like they were going to sit on our own desks... and every driver, and OS update was installed, too. Hell, i would even ask the client their preferred Web Browser, and what game platforms they use (Steam, Origin, Battle.net, etc.), and any other non-commercial software they used on a regular basis (Discord, OBS, Notepad++, VLC, etc.) AND PREINSTALL THAT TOO. FOR $140 MAX.

 

The level of complete laziness, even from the winning company in this video, is completely shocking.

(Side note: Linus, if you want to hear some hilarious Juicy deets regarding that "other" Canadian system integrator / retailer that no, I'm not willing to comment on publicly, DM me. got a couple great little stories)

[Kazlehoff]

1 hour ago, W.D. Stevens said:

To sidestep the Dell bashing... <SNIP> ...Linus leaned quite heavily on systems that used a SATA SSD as a boot drive as opposed to going NVME. Isn't the current wisdom that for a boot drive, NVME doesn't actually provide an appreciable benefit? 

Didn't LTT also do a video showing that there was little appreciable speed difference for gaming (the use case for all these systems) between Sata3, NVME, and Gen 4 PCIe NVME? I'm sure they did. Why then the push against the sata drives?

[BaidDSB]

As if it wasnt bad enough. Read this bullshit.

 

https://www.exchange4media.com/marketing-news/dell-is-indias-most-trusted-brand-tra-report-109386.html

[Ginger Penguin]

6 minutes ago, Kazlehoff said:

Didn't LTT also do a video showing that there was little appreciable speed difference for gaming (the use case for all these systems) between Sata3, NVME, and Gen 4 PCIe NVME? I'm sure they did. Why then the push against the sata drives?

This is the video I was thinking of. I should probably watch it again. Was it the one you were thinking of too?

[Kazlehoff]

1 minute ago, BaidDSB said:

As if it wasnt bad enough. Read this bullshit.

 

https://www.exchange4media.com/marketing-news/dell-is-indias-most-trusted-brand-tra-report-109386.html

Could this be an issue of some of the other major SI's not shipping there?

 

Or something more dodgy, like a paid-for award?

From the article:

"This year’s study had 1,711 consumer-influencers..."

what is a consumer-influencer? How are they different from a consumer? What is the top rated PC brand for consumers, instead of Influencers?

from here: (https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/blog/20-influencer-marketing-statistics-that-will-surprise-you) it would appear that what the award is saying, is that among Instagrammers, Youtubers, Twitch streamers, etc that promote brands, dell is the best... to promote? or the best brand paying them to promote?

 

interesting choice of (misleading?) words there.

[Kazlehoff]

2 minutes ago, W.D. Stevens said:

This is the video I was thinking of. I should probably watch it again. Was it the one you were thinking of too?

It is, indeed.

[papajo]

Well that's not exactly in Dell's defense but rather an observation, I noticed the accent on the rep which was hindu like and her english wasnt "native" (as a non native although my English isnt perfect either when speaking or typing in real time without thinking about it I can distinguish natives from non natives ) 

 

 

That leads me to believe that Dell outsources to cheap phone centers in India for their customer support/sales which probably is the reason for the bad experience

 

Because these are just "OEM" kinda services this person could respond to many different call from totally different companies and doesnt have a specialized training. 

 

They are just given some scripts and that's it (also paid a few dollars a month) it could be a person e.g like your aunt in the farm who goes to the city and answers calls for dell Walmart Verizon etc

 

In other words the person who made this PC build probably hasnt seen a gaming PC up close in their lives and her personal PC (if she has one to begin with) would be some Windows XP white tower PC obviously that person wouldnt be able to provide any meaningful support in terms of hardware choices etc she just doesnt know better... (nor 90% if not 100% of her colleges in that indian phonecall center sweatshop she works at) 

 

In other words it's like choosing illegal aliens from a gass station's back alley and hire them to work as waiters in a fancy restaurant ... obviously there are going to be problems   

 

And this is not in Dells defense because they chose to outsource like that but I mentioned because it's neither dells policy... like dell didnt exactly want you to buy 1 stick ram and not get their gaming line etc... it just thinks that paying less for customer support via phone by outsourcing it to india is better for them  

 

 

[atxcyclist]

48 minutes ago, BaidDSB said:

As if it wasnt bad enough. Read this bullshit.

 

https://www.exchange4media.com/marketing-news/dell-is-indias-most-trusted-brand-tra-report-109386.html

Dell has a lot of their technical support staff in India, not sure if that factors in though.

[BaidDSB]

3 hours ago, papajo said:

Well that's not exactly in Dell's defense but rather an observation, I noticed the accent on the rep which was hindu like and her english wasnt "native" (as a non native although my English isnt perfect either when speaking or typing in real time without thinking about it I can distinguish natives from non natives ) 

 

 

That leads me to believe that Dell outsources to cheap phone centers in India for their customer support/sales which probably is the reason for the bad experience

 

Because these are just "OEM" kinda services this person could respond to many different call from totally different companies and doesnt have a specialized training. 

 

They are just given some scripts and that's it (also paid a few dollars a month) it could be a person e.g like your aunt in the farm who goes to the city and answers calls for dell Walmart Verizon etc

 

In other words the person who made this PC build probably hasnt seen a gaming PC up close in their lives and her personal PC (if she has one to begin with) would be some Windows XP white tower PC obviously that person wouldnt be able to provide any meaningful support in terms of hardware choices etc she just doesnt know better... (nor 90% if not 100% of her colleges in that indian phonecall center sweatshop she works at) 

 

In other words it's like choosing illegal aliens from a gass station's back alley and hire them to work as waiters in a fancy restaurant ... obviously there are going to be problems   

 

And this is not in Dells defense because they chose to outsource like that but I mentioned because it's neither dells policy... like dell didnt exactly want you to buy 1 stick ram and not get their gaming line etc... it just thinks that paying less for customer support via phone by outsourcing it to india is better for them  

 

 

That isnt our problem though. Yes most of us Indians havent even used a computer yet much less Gaming PCs. SO obviously its gonna be out of their range. But that doesnt mean racists should come and start with the "hurr durr indians bad poop street" bullshit like i have seen in some of the comments on Youtube and twitter. Its Dell's problem of not paying people anywhere because even in India they can pay more to get better support staff. 

The issue is Dell's alone, not the operators. Which is why i dont like Linus bashing Origin PC. They probably pay their staff well which translates to higher end user prices. Its not bad at all. Better have well paid and knowledgeable staff than all cost cut cheaper PCs.

[Egg-Roll]

5 hours ago, papajo said:

That leads me to believe that Dell outsources to cheap phone centers in India for their customer support/sales which probably is the reason for the bad experience

No, not this bullshit of "that person has a accent must be from X country" again... It's 100% within Dells policy (internally) to screw over their clients, else their invoices wouldn't look like a dog ate them barfed it back up and repeated the process about 100 times.

 

As for your deliberate discrimination and accusation of location, just so you know a person with such accent could be (at least where I live) in Toronto Mississauga Brampton or Scarborough, and they are the most popular people to be in call centers here because it is easy to get work w/o doing heavy manual labor.

 

5 hours ago, papajo said:

In other words it's like choosing illegal aliens from a gass station's back alley and hire them to work as waiters in a fancy restaurant ... obviously there are going to be problems   

Seriously? Discriminating aliens and claiming that they can't do equally as good of a job as others? If anything people illegally working in said country ARE more likely to do more for less and work harder.

 

5 hours ago, papajo said:

I mentioned because it's neither dells policy

Do you work for Dell, more specifically do you work in the corporate hierarchic where you get to make or see the choices? If no then you don't know.

FYI over selling services is a big issue here in North America, last year(maybe 2) Canadian banks got hit hard by the media about their aggressive pushing of sales. Just because you have read their "policies" doesn't mean you know their internal ones, or all of them.

 

5 hours ago, papajo said:

like dell didnt exactly want you to buy 1 stick ram and not get their gaming line etc...

No they totally want you to get 2 sticks for the same price costing them more money. Why the hell do you think it's the default option? Do you really think they give a damn what you want to use your PC for? I've not seen a single stick in a computer in over 15 years, less Dells and I've seem many, many, many Dells, some being high end work stations with quadros...

 

Now please leave and kindly do us all a favor, don't come back, your words of discrimination are not welcomed here. Blaming it on the person in a country is stupid esp when it has been a known issues for years with dell getting fined for it as well. The person is only doing what they are told and if they are in another country they might not know they are breaking the law, HOWEVER this does not excuse Dell from causing it as they have done nothing to prevent it and are more likely causing it. So in other words it is safe to assume Dell is tell them to do it.

 

1 hour ago, BaidDSB said:

they can pay more to get better support staff. 

They just need to train them better. You can have a low wage worker and be considered as a entry company to the business, but you don't need to have bad workers, invest the savings from the workers in better training programs.

 

1 hour ago, BaidDSB said:

Better have well paid and knowledgeable staff than all cost cut cheaper PCs.

Or better yet when stock stabilizes built it yourself, usually the cheapest option, or potentially that one person in every company who doesn't give a shit.

 

Side note: Alienware has stupid setups, 8GB ram? I've personally not had that since P4 days. Or better yet a 1660 Super for 16GB ram vs a 2060 with only 8GB, worst yet the 2060 one only comes with a HDD... At roughly the cost of my 3800X 64GB 5700 XT...

Also get this, buy the 3800 X, get forced not only to spend $300 CAD more (100 less than what I paid for it), but also get forced into water cooling, which isn't needed.

My system from Dell costs $3000 CAD, to get the nvidia 2070 Super (basically the equal of the 5700 XT) is a +1200 and a $50 PSU upgrade... WTF You could literally buy the parts and find someone for $500 to build it and it would still be cheaper than Dell. Tho now I wonder what is Dells "water cooling" option.

[GodAtum]

Dell straight up charged you for the warranty, then tried to get you to RMA the system instead of sending a tech out....

[darknessblade]

Now Linus needs to Drag out the CEO of dell for "Redemption" Secret shopper 2021. Where the CEO call support him/herself under a pseudonym. and have him/her order a PC.

 

Lets see if the CEO likes his own Policy.

 

Of course the rule would be if he says he/her is the CEO. or informs his staff of this. they will have to DOUBLE refund every consumer who got uncharged against their wishes.

[Mad153]

I this would be interesting with laptops and see how like Microsoft and apple would compare to the major companies who sell most laptops like dell and hp

[GoodBytes]

1 hour ago, Egg-Roll said:

No they totally want you to get 2 sticks for the same price costing them more money. Why the hell do you think it's the default option? Do you really think they give a damn what you want to use your PC for? I've not seen a single stick in a computer in over 15 years, less Dells and I've seem many, many, many Dells, some being high end work stations with quadros..

My work PC (laptop - business line) made by HP, has 1 stick of RAM.

Also, instead of using a NVMe drive, despite having a supported M.2 Slot, they used a SATA M.2 drive.

Also, you would be pleased to hear that they didn't put enough thermal paste, making all of our system thermal throttle. The fix was for us to replace the thermal paste and apply it correctly. That has fixed this problem entirely.

[GoodBytes]

3 hours ago, Mad153 said:

I this would be interesting with laptops and see how like Microsoft and apple would compare to the major companies who sell most laptops like dell and hp

Apple would totally win in terms of friendly service and especially after sale service. Apple invests a lot in their after-sale service. Got a question on your new Mac os iPhone, you'll get amazing service when you call.

 

Unless things have changed recently, Microsoft after-sale service and warranty are all managed by a third-party company, that rely on goals which isn't customer satisfactions, but rather on how much money they save their client (Microsoft) in reducing RMAs. So, if your device is actually faulty (and outside of the return window), you have to fight a bit for them to actually RMA it (which in turn you'll get a refurbished system, and not your system repaired). And if your problem is intermittent, then expect your device to be sent back to you with a letter saying that no issue was found, and you'll need to call and fight again.

 

[Egg-Roll]

1 hour ago, GoodBytes said:

My work PC (laptop - business line) made by HP, has 1 stick of RAM.

Also, instead of using a NVMe drive, despite having a supported M.2 Slot, they used a SATA M.2 drive.

Also, you would be pleased to hear that they didn't put enough thermal paste, making all of our system thermal throttle. The fix was for us to replace the thermal paste and apply it correctly. That has fixed this problem entirely.

I dealt mostly with Dell in the past, HPs were rare for us, but every HP system I saw had 2 sticks. For most computer uses in the office 1 stick will work, guess Dell never got the memo that not everyone does office work only. I was actually shocked to find Quadro systems with just 1 stick truth be told lol.

At least you got a SSD, with Dell you could spend $1200 and still get stuck with a HDD that would drive you mad trying to load windows 10 (I'm experienced with this) Loading programs on a HDD can be slow at times but not as slow as make a cup of coffee and you might have windows login by then.

 

1 hour ago, GoodBytes said:

Unless things have changed recently, Microsoft after-sale service and warranty are all managed by a third-party company, that rely on goals which isn't customer satisfactions, but rather on how much money they save their client (Microsoft) in reducing RMAs. So, if your device is actually faulty (and outside of the return window), you have to fight a bit for them to actually RMA it (which in turn you'll get a refurbished system, and not your system repaired back). And if your problem is intermittent, then expect your device to be sent back to you with a letter saying that no issue was found, and you'll need to call and fight again.

Sounds like Samsung... At least when someone I know had to deal with them with their S3.

[muhwyndham]

9 hours ago, W.D. Stevens said:

To sidestep the Dell bashing (which I'm totally on board with - wow, they are worse than I realised - this is something that should be followed up with especially if other people have been scammed - some sort of class action thing maybe?) there was something in the video I was curious about. Linus leaned quite heavily on systems that used a SATA SSD as a boot drive as opposed to going NVME. Isn't the current wisdom that for a boot drive, NVME doesn't actually provide an appreciable benefit? When building or parting out systems for friends and family I always go SATA for boot because they're always cheaper for a given capacity so you can save a fair amount if you're on a lower budget or increase your solid-state capacity for the same price if that's more important. Even in my pretty spec'd out video editing PC I use a SATA for boot and an NVME for project files, cache and render.

This more of an asking price vs received goods problem rather than SATA vs NVMe for OS and gaming really. at 1500 USD, it is pretty easy to just somehow slots NVMe SSD there, just little bit more than SATA for the same capacity. That's why Linus is leaning hard on why it isn't NVMe, because it is expected given the provided budget.